Brantwood from the Lake

William Gershom Collingwood was an English author, artist and antiquary. He first met Ruskin at Oxford in 1872, and studied at the Slade School of Art between 1876 and 1878. He made several visits to Brantwood, and in 1881-82 was employed by John Ruskin as an assistant and later as Secretary.

This watercolour sketch was made for a larger oil painting. Brantwood was Ruskin's home for the later part of his life. Ruskin bought the house, by Coniston Water in the Lake District, unseen in 1871 from ‘a friend in need of money’ - the radical printer W.J. Linton. He wrote later that year to Thomas Carlyle describing it. “It is a bit of steep hillside facing west … the slope is half copse, half moor and rock.”